Mr. Malvern Atherton has worked in the engine controls field at Rolls-Royce for his entire career. After covering the main design fields in control systems, including engine control laws, modeling, and fault accommodation, Atherton was the Systems Lead Engineer on several projects, including turbofan, turboshaft, and turboprop engines. In 2009, he was appointed Chief Design Engineer for Control Systems.

Atherton holds a BS in electrical and mechanical engineering from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, a Postgraduate Diploma in control and information technology from the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, UK, and an SM in Engineering and Management through the System Design and Management (SDM) Program at MIT.

Mr. Devon C. Campbell is Head (Director) of Engineering and Systems for Novartis Molecular Diagnostics (MDx), where he is responsible for the engineering, systems engineering, and systems integration of in vitro diagnostic (IVD) tests and systems. MDx strives to become a world leader in developing and commercializing diagnostic tests to optimize patient outcomes and to transform the practice of medicine.

Previously, he served as Director of Platform Development at Ventana Medical Systems, a member of the Roche Group, where his holistic vision and leadership drove complex, interdisciplinary product development teams creating world-class medical diagnostic devices. Over the course of nearly 12 years at Ventana, Mr. Campbell served in multiple technical development and leadership roles, helping the company grow from $69 million to over $445 million in annual revenue. Mr. Campbell maintains a development philosophy that stresses the importance of innovation and a relentless systems-thinking perspective from concept generation and requirement decomposition through development and commercialization.

Throughout his career, Mr. Campbell has launched several successful IVD devices, leading to two Gold Medal Medical Device Excellence Awards (MDEA) from UBM Canon in addition to multiple domestic and international patents as a named inventor. He was honored by UBM Canon and MD+DI Magazine in 2008 as one of the top 100 notable individuals making significant contributions toward advancing the medical device industry.

Mr. Campbell holds master and bachelor of science degrees in mechanical engineering from the University of Arizona where he now serves on the Industrial Advisory Board for the College of Engineering. The University of Arizona Alumni Association acknowledged Mr. Campbell’s industrial and academic contributions in 2010 when they presented him with the inaugural Young Professional Achievement Award recognizing a single alumnus across all colleges who has quickly attained prominence in his or her field.

In 2008, Novartis established Molecular Diagnostics (MDx), an integrated unit within the Novartis Pharmaceuticals Division that leverages the company’s strengths and capabilities in pharmaceutical research, development, and commercialization to translate identified biomarkers into high-quality diagnostic tests. Through the creation of the MDx unit, Novartis has demonstrated a systems approach at the foundational level in its pursuit of advancing the future of personalized medicine. The successful and efficient delivery of personalized medicine requires both an effective drug and a targeted companion diagnostic test. Fundamentally, our basic strategy comprehends the need to have an integrated systems approach to the myriad complex issues that exist along the interfaces between drug discovery, drug development, and in vitro diagnostic (IVD) system development. In practice, the creation of a successful IVD system demands the adoption of a strong, systems thinking perspective as multiple, completely disparate technologies must be synthesized into a single, cohesive, well-characterized system.

This presentation will broadly examine how the application of systems thinking has uniquely positioned Novartis in this complicated and highly regulated healthcare arena. We will also investigate specific, technical examples of how systems thinking is being implemented within the MDx organization toward the holistic development of highly complex, yet innovative, IVD tests and systems.

Professor Edward Crawley received the Ford Professor of Engineering at MIT and is a Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics and of Engineering Systems. He received an SB (1976) and an SM (1978) in aeronautics and astronautics, and an ScD (1981) in aerospace structures from MIT. He currently serves as the Director of the Bernard M. Gordon-MIT Engineering Leadership Program, an effort to strengthen significantly the quality of engineering education for competitiveness and innovation. From 2003 to 2006 he served as the Executive Director of the Cambridge-MIT Institute, a joint venture with Cambridge University, funded by the British government and industry, with a mission to understand and generalize how universities act as engines of innovation and economic growth. In this capacity he was in close consultation with the British government on issues of science and innovation policy. For the previous seven years, he served as the Department Head of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT, leading the strategic realignment of the department.

Professor Crawley's earlier research interests centered on structural dynamics, aeroelasticity and the development of actively controlled and intelligent structures. He is the author of numerous journal publications in the AIAA Journal, the ASME Journal, the Journal of Composite Materials, and Acta Astronautica. Credited with being one of the early contributors to the field of active structural control, several of these publications have over 100 citations, and one over 700. For his work in the field, Professor Crawley was awarded both the AIAA Structures, Structural Dynamics, and Materials Award, and the ASME Adaptive Structures Medal. He is co-author of two books in the field.

Recently, his research has focused on the domain of architecture, design, and decision support in complex technical systems that involve economic and stakeholder issues. His work spans a range from the development of underlying theory, typified by a recent paper on the Algebra of Systems, to the development of methods and tools, such as Object Process Networks and Architecture Decision Graphs. It extends as far as a consulting role on the design of actual systems. Currently he is engaged with NASA on the design of its lunar and earth observing systems, and with BP on oil exploration system designs.

As an educator, Professor Crawley has won numerous teaching awards, including being selected in 1992 as among the first class of MacVicar Faculty Fellows at MIT. Serving as the first codirector of engineering, he helped found the International Space University, now in Strasbourg, France. He was the founding codirector of the System Design and Management Program, leading to a degree jointly offered by the School of Engineering and Sloan School of Management at MIT. He is the founding codirector of an international collaboration on the reform of engineering education, and the lead author of the recent book — Rethinking Engineering Education, the CDIO Approach.

Professor Crawley is a Fellow of the AIAA and the Royal Aeronautical Society (UK), and is a member of three national academies of engineering: the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Science, the (UK) Royal Academy of Engineering, and the US National Academy of Engineering. He was awarded a Doctor Honoris Causa by Chalmers University, Sweden, in 2006.

In his outreach and public service, Professor Crawley has served as chairman of the NASA Technology and Commercialization Advisory Committee, and was a member of the NASA Advisory Committee. He holds the NASA Public Service Medal. In 1993 he was a member of the Presidential Advisory Committee on the Space Station Redesign. He has served on numerous committees of the National Research Council, and recently cochaired the committee reviewing the NASA Exploration Technology Development Program. He is a member of the Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy.

He is conversant in Russian and has spent time as a visitor at the Moscow Aviation Institute, the Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Tsinghua University, Stanford University, and Cambridge University. He was a finalist in the NASA astronaut selection in 1980, is an active pilot, and was the 1990, 1995, and 2005 Northeast Regional Soaring Champion. In 2004 he received the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award of the Boy Scouts of America.

A founder of ACX, a Cambridge-based product development and manufacturing firm, he served as its Chairman and Chief Technology Officer from 1992 to 2000, at which time it was acquired by Cymer Inc. (CYMI). He is a founder and the Chairman of BioScale, a company developing biomolecular detectors. In the summer of 2007 he founded and serves as the Chairman of Dataxu, a Cambridge- and Beijing-based company in Internet advertising matching. In addition, he has served on the boards and advisory boards of numerous other entrepreneurial ventures. In 2003 he was elected to the Board of Directors of Orbital Sciences Corporation (ORB), where he serves on the Compensation and Audit and Finance committees.

Professor Steven D. Eppinger is Professor of Management Science at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He also holds the General Motors Leaders for Global Operations Chair and has a joint appointment in MIT's Engineering Systems Division. He served as Deputy Dean of MIT Sloan from 2004 to 2009 and as Faculty Codirector from 2001 to 2003 of the MIT Leaders for Global Operations (formerly MIT Leaders for Manufacturing) and the System Design and Management programs. From 1999 to 2001 he served as Codirector of the Center for Innovation in Product Development.

At MIT Sloan, Professor Eppinger has created an interdisciplinary product development course in which graduate students from engineering, management, and industrial design programs collaborate to develop new products. He also teaches MIT's executive programs in the area of product development.

Professor Eppinger has co-authored a widely used textbook entitled Product Design and Development published by McGraw-Hill. In 1993, he received both MIT's Graduate Student Council Teaching Award and the Sloan School's Award for Innovation and Excellence in Management Education.

Professor Eppinger's research efforts are applied to improving product design and development practices. This research is conducted within MIT's Center for Innovation in Product Development and focuses on organizing complex design processes in order to accelerate industrial practices. This work has been applied primarily in the automotive, electronics, aerospace, and equipment industries. He has authored more than 40 articles in refereed academic journals and conferences. He received the ASME Best Paper Award in Design Theory and Methodology in 1995 and again in 2001.

Professor Eppinger received SB, SM, and ScD degrees from MIT's Department of Mechanical Engineering before joining the MIT faculty in 1988. His experience includes work as a machinist, manufacturing engineer, product designer, and consultant in both prototype and production operations. He lectures regularly for international corporations and in executive education programs. He has consulted for or conducted research with more than 50 firms.

He serves on the Research Advisory Council of the Design Management Institute and on the Advisory Board of Directors of the Society of Concurrent Product Development.

The engineering design profession is undergoing substantial changes at this time. This presentation highlights important trends in three areas:

1. Engineering design processes, which have become almost entirely digital through the use of CAD, CAE, and PDM tools 2. Engineering organizations, which are now more globally distributed through the adoption of outsourcing and offshoring business models 3. Engineering culture, which is changing with the influx of Generation Y engineers who have grown up using the internet and social networking tools and, as a result, think and work differently than their predecessors

These changes have profound impact on the engineering design profession, on the ways we must develop engineers today, on the kinds of jobs that engineers will have in the near future, and on the challenges of engineering leadership.

The impact of these changes will be far-reaching.

Engineering-based businesses must learn to utilize engineering talent in more open and collaborative ways. Most will struggle to adapt to the relatively rapid changes of methods and business models.

Engineering design methods will continue to evolve through the incorporation of collaborative and distributed tools for the execution of more and more of the development process. Entirely new design and development processes will become feasible with the incorporation of advanced networking methods.

The engineering design profession has always been evolving to include new types of engineering jobs. The profession will now also face new challenges of leadership, as technical managers struggle to coordinate global projects and to mentor young engineers who have new and different career aspirations.

Engineering design education faces an immediate challenge to engage students in relevant project-based experiences that can expose them both to traditional technical material and to new ways to connect and apply those tools.

Dr. Katharine Frase is responsible for working across IBM Research on behalf of IBM clients, to create innovative industry-focused solutions. Prior to this role, she was VP, Technical and Business Strategy, business strategy, business development, standards, competitive analysis and the application of advanced technologies across SWG. Past roles in IBM include corporate assignments on technology assessment and strategy, and roles in IBM Microelectronics in the management of process design/modeling methodology and production of chip carriers, assemblies and test.

In 2006, Dr. Frase was elected as a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). She received an A.B. in chemistry from Bryn Mawr College and a Ph.D. in materials science and engineering from the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Frase is a member of the assessment committee for the Army Research Laboratory and a participant in a number of NAE-sponsored activities.

Dr. Julian Goldman founded the Medical Device "Plug-and-Play" (MD PnP) Interoperability Program in 2004 to promote innovation in patient safety and clinical care by leading the adoption of patient-centric medical device integration. The MD PnP program team was the recipient of the 2007 CIMIT Edward M Kennedy Award for Healthcare Innovation.

Dr. Goldman completed anesthesiology residency and fellowship training at the University of Colorado. His research fellowship was in medical device informatics, focusing on simulation and artificial intelligence applications for monitoring and real-time decision support. He departed Colorado in 1998 as a tenured associate professor to work as an executive of a medical device company. Dr. Goldman joined Harvard Medical School and the Department of Anesthesia, Critical Care, and Pain Medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital in 2002, where he continues to practice clinical anesthesia.

Dr. Goldman serves on the NSF CISE Advisory Committee and served as a Visiting Scholar in the FDA Medical Device Fellowship Program and as a member of the CDC BSC for the NCPHI. He currently serves in leadership positions in several medical device standardization organizations including Chair of ISO Technical Committee 121, Chair of the Use Case Working Group of the Continua Health Alliance, and User Vice Chair of ASTM Committee F29. Dr. Goldman is the recipient of the International Council on Systems Engineering 2010 Pioneer Award, American College of Clinical Engineering (ACCE) 2009 Award for Professional Achievement in Technology, the 2009 AAMI Foundation/Institute for Technology in Health Care Clinical Application Award, and the University of Colorado Chancellor's "Bridge to the Future" Award.

Dr. Doug Hague leads the Small Business Analytics team with the Consumer and Small Business Bank. This team supports the Small Business Bank with analysis of business performance, client behaviors, and strategic initiatives. Dr. Hague also leads the Quantitative Management Associate Program's campus hire program and is a member of the Enterprise Quant Council that guides development and programs for quantitative talent across Bank of America. Prior to his current role, Dr. Hague led a similar team for Reporting & Analytics within the Corporate Bank and a Six Sigma team for Enterprise Credit Risk.

Dr. Hague has more than 15 years of experience across aerospace, telecom, and banking industries where he has led teams in research, design, manufacturing, strategy, and, most recently, information management. He holds a BS degree in engineering physics from the University of Tulsa, and MS and PhD degrees in materials science from Penn State, and an MS degree in engineering and management from MIT as an alumnus of the MIT System Design and Management Program. Dr. Hague has published 18 articles and has received 4 U.S. patents.

Mr. Pat Hale joined MIT in 2003, following a 22-year career in the US Navy. Since that time, he has led the MIT-Industry Partner Systems Engineering Certificate Program, a one-year graduate certificate program that is part of the MIT System Design and Management Program (SDM), and he is currently Executive Director of the System Design and Management program. His professional interests include the application of systems engineering in commercial product development, complex naval system design, and engineering process frameworks and methods.

While in the Navy, Mr. Hale qualified in both Surface Warfare and Submarine Warfare (Engineering Duty) communities, and managed the design and construction of submarines in Groton, CT. Mr. Hale later held executive-level systems engineering positions in defense and commercial system and product development organizations, including as Director of Systems Engineering at both Draper Laboratory and Otis Elevator Company, where he developed and implemented Otis’ first systems engineering process and organization.

Mr. Hale is a past President of the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE); he has been an INCOSE member since 1994 and has served on its board of directors for 11 years. He has published papers in the area of commercial systems engineering in the conference proceedings of both INCOSE and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

Mr. Hale holds a BS in geophysical oceanography from the University of Washington, as well as the degrees of Ocean Engineer and SM in naval architecture and marine engineering from MIT.

Dr. David Hartzband is a Lecturer in the MIT Engineering Systems Division, where he teaches Large-Scale Software Architecture and conducts research in healthcare information technology. Dr. Hartzband has more than 25 years of experience in software design, development, and deployment, including 13 years at Digital Equipment Corporation. He was the architect of Digital's relational database systems at V1 and V2, and he was one of the architects of the Open Software Foundation distributed system environment. He also served as Chief Scientist for Artificial Intelligence for the corporation and held many other positions. He was one of Digital's representatives to the Leaders for Manufacturing Program at MIT (now Leaders for Global Manufacturing) at the time of the program's founding.

Dr. Hartzband left Digital in 1995 and spent almost 10 years as the Chief Technology Officer or Vice President of Engineering for a number of companies, including ECM Corporation, which he served as Technology Vice President of Collaboration Software until 2004. Since then, he has been at MIT working on healthcare information technology issues both in research areas and as an architect/consultant for various Healthcare Information Exchanges and HIT companies. He has published in the areas of software design, artificial intelligence, distributed systems architecture, the relationship of technology and organizations, and healthcare information technology. He is currently a co-principal investigator on an Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality grant to develop and deploy a nationwide network to facilitate medical comparative effectiveness research. He is also a featured blogger at the HIT Exchange website.

Dr. Sahar Hashmi is a medical doctor who is pursuing her PhD in MIT's Engineering Systems Division (ESD) with an interest in healthcare systems management. Her research focuses on how to use engineering systems tools to measure and improve the performance and cost of healthcare systems. In one of Dr. Hashmi's projects she used queuing theory to help improve the effective handling of patients within MIT Medical's urgent care unit.

Dr. Hashmi is the medical leader of the MIT chapter of the Institute of Healthcare Improvement (IHI) and is working with MIT Medical to study the effects of certain health policies that were implemented at the time of the flu pandemic in 2009.

Mr. John Helferich is an Adjunct Professor at The College of Business Administration at Northeastern University and a Batten Fellow at the Darden School of the University of Virginia. His recent work has focused on executive education and consulting on innovation for established companies. He has just completed a master’s degree in engineering and management in MIT's System Design and Management Program (SDM). His thesis was on a new system approach to food safety. He will be continuing his research in the ESD PhD program in the fall of 2011.

Mr. Helferich graduated from MIT in 1979 with a degree in chemical engineering. He had a 28-year career in research and development with P&G, Ocean Spray Cranberries, and Mars Inc. He was appointed in 1995 to the position of Vice President of R&D for the US division of Mars Inc. During his tenure, Mars made great strides in globalizing its technology development, improving its product development process, and protecting its intellectual property. These improvements resulted in improved product innovation and led Mars to industry-leading initiatives, such as improving the sustainability of the global cocoa crop, demonstrating the exciting health benefits of cocoa and chocolate, and the MyM&Ms personalized candy business.

Mr. Helferich joined the SDM program to complete a thesis on a new approach to food safety in the United States and to add depth to his teaching at Northeastern University. For example, in ESD 83 he sought to expand his perspective on complex systems and what is required to make large-scale change in a system such as the US food production system. He is committed to helping make a leap forward in food safety in the United States through the application of Professor Nancy Leveson’s STAMP/STPA approach to safety of the food supply.

Professor Richard C. Larson's career has focused on using operations research approaches for many different services systems, in both the public and private sectors. He currently serves as founding Director of MIT’s Center for Engineering Systems Fundamentals (CESF), an emerging center focused on fundamentals of large, networked complex systems and is co-PI in charge of emergency preparedness and response for CREATE, a national research center at the University of Southern California that is focused on homeland security. He will have primary responsibility for directing the project and providing technical guidance in the data acquisition and modeling techniques. CREATE is supported by the US Department of Homeland Security.

Professor Larson is past president of INFORMS, the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences. He served as Codirector of the MIT Operations Research Center and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, an INFORMS Founding Fellow, and a recipient of the INFORMS President’s Award, Lanchester Prize, and Kimball Medal. He is author of "Simple Models of Influenza Progression within a Heterogeneous Population," which appeared in Operations Research.

From 1995 to mid 2003, Professor Larson served as Director of MIT's CAES, Center for Advanced Educational Services. His position at CAES focused on bringing technology-enabled learning to students living on the traditional campus and to those living and working far from the university, perhaps on different continents. During the years 1995 -1999 he built the center from two to seven business units, encompassing MIT's production and R&D capabilities in educational technologies and its two major lifelong learning academic programs. He has been invited to give lectures on the future of technology-enabled education in testimony before the House Committee on Science (Washington, DC) and in North and South America, Asia, Africa, and Europe.

Professor Larson served as Principal Investigator of several of MIT's most ambitious technology-enabled learning programs, including PIVoT -- the web-based Physics Interactive Video Tutor. He was cofounder, with Glenn Strehle, of MIT World. He is founding Director of LINC, Learning International Networks Consortium, an MIT-based international project that has held five international symposia and sponsored a number of initiatives in Africa, China, and the Middle East. He recently started LINC's newest and largest initiative, BLOSSOMS, Blended Learning Open Source Science or Math Studies -- sponsored by the Hewlett Foundation with additional support from the Sloan Foundation, the Lord Foundation, and the Lounsbery Foundation. On behalf of LINC, his recent foreign trips have been to China, Japan, Senegal, Iran, Indonesia, Algeria, Pakistan, Jordan, Kuwait, and the UAE. From 1999 through 2004, Professor Larson served as founding Codirector of the Forum the Internet and the University -- a not-for-profit organization affiliated with the Forum for the Future of Higher Education.

Professor Larson received his PhD from MIT.

Prior to becoming Global Head of Diagnostics Development at Novartis Molecular Diagnostics, Dr. Michael C. Little served as Vice President of Research and Development at Novartis Diagnostics, where he was responsible for all functions and processes related to portfolio and product development in diagnostics.

Dr. Little has more than 20 years of industrial experience in biotech. Prior to joining Novartis, he served as Chief Operating Officer at a startup company, Adlyfe Inc. He also spent 16 years with BD Diagnostics, where he was a co-inventor of Strand Displacement Amplification, the Program Manager for the BDProbeTecET and the WW Business Head for Molecular Diagnostics. Throughout his career, Dr. Little has launched and managed two clinical molecular diagnostics platforms and has built a portfolio of 22 issued or pending patents.

Dr. Little earned a PhD in microbiology from the University of Florida and completed a post-doctoral program in molecular biology at the University of Arizona. He is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Society for Microbiology, and the Society of Critical Care Medicine.

Professor Thomas L. Magnanti is one of 13 Institute Professors at MIT and former Dean of MIT’s School of Engineering. He formerly headed one third of the MIT Sloan School of Management and led several programs including, as the founding co-director, MIT’s System Design and Management and Leaders for Manufacturing programs and, as founding director, the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART). He also formerly served as president of three professional societies and editor of a major journal in his field.

Professor Magnanti is a member of the US National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He earned an undergraduate degree in chemical engineering from Syracuse University, as well as master's degrees in statistics and in mathematics, and a PhD in operations research, all from Stanford University. In addition, he holds honorary degrees from four universities. His technical expertise is in large-scale optimization and its applications in telecommunications, transportation, production planning and scheduling, and logistics.

Mr. Thomas Pelland was appointed vice president and general manager, Air Management Systems (AMS), in March 2010. Pelland leads design and development of AMS' ventilation, thermal management, and pressurization control systems for the world's leading aircraft manufacturers. AMS, which is located at Hamilton Sundstrand's headquarters in Windsor Locks, Conn., includes German-based Nord-Micro and Russian-based HS Nauka.

Pelland has extensive engineering and program management experience. He joined Hamilton Sundstrand in April 2009 as vice president of Boeing's 787-9 program, shortly after Hamilton Sundstrand established the Office of the 787 to provide dedicated program focus. He was responsible for business development, product development, systems integration, and overall program execution efforts across all Hamilton Sundstrand business units.

Prior to joining Hamilton Sundstrand, Pelland worked for more than 20 years at Pratt & Whitney in positions of increasing responsibility in both engineering and program management. Most recently, Pelland was director of the Next Generation Product PW1000G Program, launched on the Bombardier CSeries and MRJ aircraft.

Pelland received his bachelor's degree in aerospace engineering from Boston University. As an alumnus of MIT’s System Design and Management Program, Pelland holds an MS in engineering and management from MIT.

Ms. Joan S. Rubin joined MIT SDM from Covidien, a leading manufacturer of medical devices and supplies, diagnostic imaging agents, and pharmaceuticals, where she served as Vice President of Business Development.

Ms. Rubin brings to SDM 17 years of business development, marketing, market development, and strategic planning experience in the medical device field. She joined Aspect Medical Systems in its startup phase several years prior to its November 2009 acquisition by Covidien. At Aspect, her roles included Vice President of Business Development, Senior Director of Global Partnerships, Director of Global Upstream Marketing, and Manager/Director of Market Development. Previously she worked as Manager of Surgical Marketing at Haemonetics Corp.

Ms. Rubin is a graduate of MIT's Leaders for Global Operations Program, where she earned an SM in management from MIT Sloan and an SM in mechanical engineering. She holds an ScB in mechanical engineering from Brown University.

Professor Warren Seering is the Weber-Shaughness Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Professor of Engineering Systems at MIT. His prior positions at MIT have included Division Head of the Design and Systems Division of Mechanical Engineering, Codirector of the Nissan Cambridge Basic Research Laboratory, and Codirector of the MIT Center for Innovation in Product Development and Codirector of MIT's System Design and Management Program.

Professor Seering’s research interests include machine dynamics, engineering system design, and product development. His teaching interests center on product development, design, and dynamics.

Professor Seering has received numerous honors, among them the Ralph R. Teetor Educational Award from the Society of Automotive Engineers, the MIT Harold E. Edgerton Award, the Lincoln Arc Welding Foundation Design Commendation, a Best Paper Award from the ASME Design Theory and Methodology Conference, the Westinghouse Distinguished Lectureship at the University of Michigan, and the MIT Frank E. Perkins Award for excellence in Graduate Advising. He is a Fellow of the ASME.

Professor Seering is a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and the Design Society. He holds a PhD from Stanford University.

Dr. Irving Wladawsky-Berger retired from IBM in 2007 after 37 years with the company. As Vice President Emeritus, IBM Academy of Technology, he continues to participate in a number of IBM's technical strategy and innovation initiatives. He is also Visiting Lecturer of engineering systems at MIT, where he is involved in multidisciplinary research and teaching activities focused on how information technologies are helping transform business organizations and the institutions of society.

At IBM he was responsible for identifying emerging technologies and marketplace developments critical to the future of the IT industry, and organizing appropriate activities in and outside IBM in order to capitalize on them. He was also responsible for IBM's university relations office and for the IBM Academy of Technology where he served as Chairman of the Board of Governors. In 1996, he led the effort to formulate IBM's Internet strategy and to develop and bring to market leading-edge Internet technologies that could be integrated into IBM's mainstream business. He subsequently led a number of companywide initiatives like Linux, Grid Computing, and the On Demand Business initiative.

He began his IBM career in 1970 at the company's Thomas J. Watson Research Center, where he started technology transfer programs to move the innovations of computer science from IBM's research labs into its product divisions. After joining IBM's product development organization in 1985, he continued his efforts to bring advanced technologies to the marketplace, leading IBM's initiatives in supercomputing and parallel computing, including the transformation of IBM's large commercial systems to parallel architectures. He has managed a number of IBM's businesses, including the large systems software and the UNIX systems divisions.

Dr. Wladawsky-Berger is Adjunct Professor in the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Group at the Imperial College Business School. He is a member of BP's Technology Advisory Council, the Visiting Committee for the Physical Sciences Division at the University of Chicago, and the Board of Visitors for the Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin. He was Co-chair of the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee, as well as a founding member of the Computer Sciences and Telecommunications Board of the National Research Council. He is a former member of the University of Chicago Board of Governors for Argonne National Laboratories and of the Board of Overseers for Fermilab. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. A native of Cuba, he was named the 2001 Hispanic Engineer of the Year.

Dr. Wladawsky-Berger received an MS and a PhD in physics from the University of Chicago.